Can anyone guide me on recreating the synth sound in Manfred Mann's cover of Blinded by the Light?

[Robert Bone]

I own the following synth collections, and need to recreate the glissando synth sound used right before each chorus in the Manfred Mann cover of Blinded by the Light - I have to have it ready to play by next Saturday, and would REALLY appreciate any help/guidance with this:

Komplete 12 Ultimate, plus a number of additional 3rd-party Kontakt libraries.

Arturia V Collection 9

SampleTank 3 and 4

Korg M1 and Wavestation emulations with all expansion packs/cards.  (The M1 expansions include the complete factory and expansion sets of sounds from the T1 as well)

Thanks to any who can give me some guidance on this.

 

Bob Bone

 

[User 905133]

Off-hand I don't know, I'd look up what instruments he was playing at the time.  Also, in case it was Manfred Mann's standard organ, Old Joad posted a list of organ drawbar presets.  Perhaps Blinded By the Light is on that list. If it is from a B3, there are a number of emulations available from various developers.     CORRECTION: Looks like its played on the Minimoog based on the live version. 

Unfortunately, with the increased level of my tinnitus and upper frequency hearing loss over the past 5 years or so, I don't think I could figure it out the settings from listening. 

UPDATE ( from Wikipedia )  :

• Blinded By the Light
  • Manfred Mann's Earth Band cover
    • Manfred Mann – organ, piano, Minimoog, backing vocals, lead vocals

If the studio version also uses a Minimoog (as listed in Wikipedia), you might want to try Arturia's emulation.  From the video it looks like he hits a high note to trigger the portamento and then drops back down to use the mod wheel to add the LFO. 

NOTE: I am more familiar with Cherry Audio's Minimoog emulation; I see that Arturia's is very different; not sure how to design patches on Arturia's Mini.

Edited June 11, 2023 by User 905133
updates; reworded; reposted vide cued up to t=155 showing the MiniMoog; to add comments based on the video

[mettelus]

Someone posted an nsmp (Nord Sample Editor) file and mp3 of it on this forum (only post with a file attached). What he did is 3-octave sweep (C3-C6) with a healthy (+/- half-step) vibrato on the end. What is interesting about that mp3 is there are very discrete harmonics (15 tones total) in his oscillator setup. The Arturia V may be the best bet to replicate with, but I do not own that (Arturia gets mentioned a lot for Minimoog sounds). NI Reaktor's Monark is also one mentioned in this list, but I just opened that for the first time and editing is not quite intuitive to me.

[User 905133]

FWIW (another angle of the performance of the portamento) :

 

[User 905133]

1 hour ago, mettelus said:

Someone posted an nsmp (Nord Sample Editor) file and mp3 of it on this forum (only post with a file attached). What he did is 3-octave sweep (C3-C6) with a healthy (+/- half-step) vibrato on the end. What is interesting about that mp3 is there are very discrete harmonics (15 tones total) in his oscillator setup. The Arturia V may be the best bet to replicate with, but I do not own that (Arturia gets mentioned a lot for Minimoog sounds). NI Reaktor's Monark is also one mentioned in this list, but I just opened that for the first time and editing is not quite intuitive to me.

Interesting.  To my ear (admittedly it could be my tinnitus), the mp3 is sort of close, but the patch doesn't sound quite right, or maybe the Minimoog is running through external FX.  Unfortunately, there's a shout of the Minimoog panel, but the clip is too blurry to read the settings. It might even be helpful if there were a clearer version that shows how many oscillators are making the sound even if the settings can't be seen. 

I have no experience with nsmp files.  Not sure what "there are very discrete harmonics (15 tones total) in his oscillator setup" means.  Are you saying the recreation uses 15 tones (overtones) at various amplitudes to approximate the Minimoog wave used?

See also this forum / thread .

Some trivia about Manfred Mann's equipment can be found here (not necessarily about Blinded by the Light).

Edited June 11, 2023 by User 905133

[mettelus]

Yeah, that patch isn't a perfect match, and the tones gain gain frequency separation during the cressendo. I am not familiar with either synth, but looks like 3 oscillators with pronounced harmonics and a frequency delta between them. You can look at the mp3 with a spectral analyzer to see what I mean (posted a quick screenshot of that mp3 file below). The original looks very similar but is hard to isolate with everything going on.

Edited June 11, 2023 by mettelus

[Promidi]

With Arturia’s MINI V3, sounds like a square wave with a duty cycle of around 25 to 30% mixed with a sawtooth.  Glide at 7.44. Mod Wheel mapped to the LFO AM and the LFO mapped the the VCO123FM - Amount 0.0002.  LFO rate around 9 hz. 

Edited June 12, 2023 by Promidi

[Robert Bone]

Yeah - thanks for the responses.  I will dive back into trying to set up a preset on the Arturia Mini v Minimoog emulation.

[Mark Owen]

I stumbled on this post as I too was wondering what synth made that sound. I thought it was an ARP Odyssey. Portamento glide and shrill ending is very ARP sounding. 

[User 905133]

6 hours ago, Mark Owen said:

I stumbled on this post as I too was wondering what synth made that sound. I thought it was an ARP Odyssey. Portamento glide and shrill ending is very ARP sounding. 

In the live performance video posted above (from at least 4 different angles) I see a Minimoog.

The first link above should start around 1:55 and shows the Minimoog from the back. The second link above should start around 5:30.  After the camera cuts away from the guitar over to the keyboards, you can see the Minimoog being played above the organ.  If you roll back to before the guitar part in that section, you can see the Minimoog.**

**At approx. 5:18 (after the closeup of the "Chopsticks" section being played on the organ), the camera pulls back and you can see the Minimoog. The closeup of the "Chopsticks" section starts at approx 5:03:

 

Edited August 6, 2023 by User 905133
(4) added a video link to start at the "Chopsticks" section; (3) added a reference to the section starting at 5:18; (2) added specific time references to the video of Blinded by the Light; (1) fixed typo

[bitflipper]

You could duplicate it pretty easily with any mono synth, including an ARP. Or any modern soft synth like Zebra or Diva.

Here's a free (and pretty good, though 32-bit) Minimoog emulation that can do it. Basically just a slow portamento and two notes from the lowest key to the highest, and some increasing frequency modulation via the mod wheel at the end. Probably a square wave.